The Expeditions: Viking newsletters of the past few months haven't been too exciting - mostly just recaps of the team's visit to various gaming events. Now that the game is close to release however, things are becoming more interesting. This month's newsletter unveils the first in what will hopefully be a series of "Devs Play" videos, featuring Logic Artists creative director Jonas Waever and community manager Teemo Ashton. Watch as they defend their village from a raid while explaining the game's various novel combat mechanics:

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The newsletter also has some details on Expedition: Viking's itemization scheme, which has been adapted for its more realistic setting:

Moving on, we've been looking at item properties. From the get go it was very important to us that supernatural elements, while important to the era, remain ambiguous. Given the right character stats you can seek more plausible explanations for the supernatural encounters in game.

But how does this tie into crafting? We obviously want crafting to be personal and special, but we can't really justify crafting magical weapons while insisting on adhering to historical authenticity either. So we turn to superstition.

An item may gain special properties either through careful attention during crafting (if the crafter has the Artisan skill), or through seeing a lot of use - these properties represent the nostalgic attachment one can develop to weapons tried and tested in battle.

A character's superstition can causes them to act as if the item is indeed special, encouraging feats of strength, reckless aggression, or even lucky saves that they might not have allowed themselves with a "mundane" item.

For example: If a player has a series of critical hits in a row with a weapon, this character might be lead to believe that the weapon itself is thirsty for blood. Thus naming the weapon for it's apparent lust for battle.

Special properties can in some cases be tied to a particular character - though you can equip the item on another character, the property will only take effect when the item is used by the character who has an attachment to it. For example, Eydis (one of our recruitable characters and residen raid mother) starts with her dead husband's helmet and as long as she's wearing it, the helmet gives her a bonus to mental resistance because she feels that her husband is watching over her in battle. Give it to anyone else however, and it's just an old helmet.
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As usual, the game looks fantastic. Next month's newsletter will have details about the beta. You might want to sign up for the newsletter yourself if you're interested in that.